The Stur­gis Motor­cy­cle rally is no place for buttoned-​​down cit­i­zens –
UNLESS THEY’RE TRYING TO HIDE A MURDER OR TWO.

In this sec­ond book in the epony­mous series, gutsy, sharp-​​witted Liv Bergen vows to clear her brother’s name as a mur­der sus­pect. Her way is hin­dered, though, by half a mil­lion bik­ers and gawk­ers who have turned the Black Hills of South Dakota into a modern-​​day Sodom in the dog days of summer.

When Liv wit­nesses a sec­ond homi­cide, she attracts the unin­vited atten­tions of Mully, the men­ac­ing leader of biker gang Lucifer’s Lot. Their cat-​​and-​​mouse game puts Liv once again in the path of FBI agent Streeter Pierce, who’s gone under­cover to find the perp in the first murder—plus a shadow crim­i­nal called the Crooked Man. Liv taps every ounce
of brains and brawn she has to avoid becom­ing the killer’s next vic­tim, and the intrigu­ing Streeter shoots to kill.

If you read my review of Brannan’s first book, In the Belly of Jonah, you know I wasn’t a huge fan, but that all changed with this book.  I loved the char­ac­ter devel­op­ment, the story, the details, and how quickly the story moved.  I was guess­ing who the killer would be from the start and was sur­prised to find myself on the wrong path right up until Liv fig­ures it out.  That doesn’t hap­pen often.

Brannan’s abil­ity to describe events and to mis­di­rect you is aston­ish­ing.  I felt like I was deep within the annual motor­cy­cle rally in Stur­gis and while it is a rough, raw, and some­times hard to swal­low place, it allowed me to expe­ri­ence some­thing I would never have the balls to do in real life.  The story can be graphic at times, but it’s not over embell­ished or drawn out for the sake of blood and gore.  It makes the story what it is, a ghastly mur­der with some bad bik­ers at the cen­ter of the story.

I love that the story of Liv was expanded, and that Streeter Pierce was in this one as well.  I wasn’t that excited about it when I fin­ished the first book, but I’m so glad I gave this one a chance and read it as well.  I’m wait­ing patiently for the next to be written.

The one thing I can only hope Bran­nan will wrap up in her next book is the mur­der of a fam­ily friend, and just who is the Crooked Man.  I hope the ref­er­ences to them in this book were put there to intrigued and per­haps fore­shadow what is to come.

If you have read In the Belly of Jonah, then I know you’ll want to pick this one up.  And if you haven’t, then you can read this one and go back later to read the first in the series (you won’t be lost if you read them out of order at this point) or go ahead and spend a week­end wrapped up with two spec­tac­u­lar mur­der mysteries.

Check out an excerpt from Lot’s Return to Sodom here: Excerpt

And if you missed her first book, In the Belly of Jonah, you can check out my review or read an excerpt from the first book here: My Review and Excerpt

Give­away

Since I was able to meet San­dra Bran­nan in per­son at the Book Blog­ger Con­ven­tion this year, I was able to score an auto­graphed copy of the book for my very own.  Which means I have my ARC avail­able for one lucky reader.  Leave a com­ment on this post, and I will choose a win­ner on Tues­day, June 14^th.

Good Luck!